Enigmatic Dinosaur Eggs

“Enigmatic” dinosaur eggs found, according to reports in BBC News 12 April 2012, Fossil Science 14 April 2012 and Cretaceous Research, 2012; 35: 33 DOI: 10.1016/j.cretres.2011.11.014. Researchers from the first Argentine-Swedish Dinosaur expedition have found some bones and eggs of an “enigmatic birdlike dinosaur” known as an Alvarezsaurid. The bones are leg bones, parts of the pelvis and a vertebra. Two eggs were found with the bones and the researchers suggest they were in the oviducts of the animal when it died. There were also eggshell fragments nearby which showed signs of calcite resorption from the inner layers, indicating they had been incubated and had contained embryos well advanced in development. The fossil has been classified as a new genus and species Bonapartenykus ultimus.

One of the researchers, Martin Kundrát, also studied the structure of the eggshells and found it was different from other dinosaur eggs, so the research team have designated a new egg-family, the Arraigadoolithidae, named after Alberto Arraigada, who owns the site where the fossils were found.

Alvarezsaurids are considered to be “basal coelurosaurs”. The new bones and eggs were found in Late Cretaceous rocks in Patagonia and the new specimen is believed to be the “latest survivor of its kind from Gondwana, the southern landmass in the Mesozoic Era”. Martin Kundrát commented: “This shows that basal alvarezsaurids persisted in South America until Latest Cretaceous times”. The BBC article reported: “Palaeontologists said they expected the eggs, which were fertilised and well-developed, to help explain how birds evolved from dinosaurs”.

Editorial Comment: These bones and eggs will not help explain how dinosaurs evolved into birds. Why not? The fact that the site contained eggs is no more evidence that a dinosaur was evolving into a bird, than any present day reptile laying eggs is evidence that the modern reptile is turning into a bird.

Likewise if it was a “basal alvarezsaurid”, that means it was the first of this kind of dinosaur to evolve, and if it survived until the time the dinosaurs died out even according to the evolutionists at the end of the Cretaceous period, then it must have reproduced after its kind from beginning to end. (Ref. reptiles, palaeontology, ova)